Navy Woes and Cavalry Stories

Tomorrow, July 30th, will be a busy day for Soldier of the Horse.

The good people at The Early Edition on CBC Vancouver have invited me to attend for an interview at 7:50 am tomorrow (0750 for present and former RCN readers, 0750 hours for all you army types out there). The occasion is a Vancouver Public Library/Royal United Services Institute initiative: the showing of the movie "War Horse" at 1:30 pm, same day, at the VPL. Later, at 7:00 pm I'll be speaking in the library about my father's time in the Canadian cavalry in the Great War and Soldier of the Horse.
My talk is the first of four scheduled in the VPL to mark the 100th anniversary of the start of World War One.

In the meantime, across the Pacific, the huge naval, land, and air exercise RIMPAC 2014 continues. But the Royal Canadian Navy finds itself short of seagoing ships. Our submarine Victoria is there, along with frigate HMCS Calgary and minesweeper HMCS Nanaimo (she is in California waters, as opposed to the central Pacific/Hawaii).
Missing in action are HMCShips Algonquin (destroyer, rusting out),  Protecteur (fire damaged supply ship), and minesweeper Whitehorse (bad behavior by members of the crew). You have to sympathize with navy personnel who in typical Canadian fashion carry on with less. Less money, less fuel, lesser numbers of ships. One has to wonder who will protect Canadian interests at sea in case of need.

HMCS Victoria to headline RIMPAC

RIMPAC 2014, a major international naval exercise, will kick off on June 26th this year and run through August 1st. Once again the RCN will be represented by HMCS Victoria and surface ships. Two years ago, during RIMPAC 2012, Victoria sank a decommissioned American ship with a live and highly successful torpedo firing.

Increased tensions at sea are current challenges for western navies. In the far east, the Peoples Liberation Army Navy is only one part of Chinese aggression toward her neighbours in the South China Sea. Meanwhile, in the Black Sea, Russia has increased its naval grip on the area with its annexation of the Crimean Peninsula.

Submarines were a major part of intelligence-gathering during the Cold War. Details of those activities are slowly surfacing, with books (eg Hunter Killers, by Iain Ballantyne) and a recent newspaper article in The Australian about the Royal Australian Navy's "secret submarines".There is no reason to think that submarine intelligence-gathering is no longer taking place.

Here is a look at an earlier post about Victoria's torpedo firing in 2012. Video footage of the target vessel sinking is here. 

Canadian Submarine Sinks a Ship

HMCS Victoria, one of Canada’s four deisel-electric submarines, is currently taking part in RIMPAC 2012, a major multinational military exercise out of Hawaii. As part of her contribution and training, Victoria got to perform a “Sinkex”, which is just what it sounds like—she sank a surface ship.

The victim was the former USNS Concord, 18,000 tons, stripped and prepped for disposal.

For a look at the shocking power of a single torpedo fired by Victoria, see this site and follow the links:

http://www.navy.forces.gc.ca/cms/4/4-a_eng.asp?id=912

The video is a brutal reminder that a single submarine has the potential to cause untold havoc on shipping. It is hard to imagine the enormity of the job faced by Allied forces during the Battle of the Atlantic, when the RCN, among others, faced the German U-boat blockade. It is equally hard to imagine the bravery of the men manning unarmed merchant ships in those cruel waters.